Excerpt:
Germany sought on Saturday to reassure the country's 3 million people of Turkish descent it would stand by them as a row with Ankara escalates, saying they were not the target of changes to government policy on Turkey.
In a letter published in German and Turkish in daily newspaper Bild, Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said Germany had no quarrel with Turkish people in either country but could not stand by as "innocent" German citizens were jailed.
On Friday, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble compared Turkey's detention of six rights activists, including a German, to repression in former communist East Germany.